


Tear and Restore

by Eclectic_Goddess



Category: Now You See Me
Genre: F/M, Gen, Magic, Paris - Freeform, Post-Movie, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eclectic_Goddess/pseuds/Eclectic_Goddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No summary until the movie is out, at least.  Impossible to avoid spoiling.</p><p>Updated to correct Alma's last name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tear and Restore

**Author's Note:**

> Recently saw a sneak preview for "Now You See Me" and I can't stop thinking about it. Hence, fic.
> 
>  
> 
> Summary ~ It’s possible that he’ll never stop surprising her. She likes it.

Dylan stays in Paris for three days. They spend most of it together. Time seems to slow, days and nights stretching to accommodate them.

Paris is Alma’s city, but Dylan takes her to cafes that she has never heard of, never seen before. They seem to melt into solid walls and spring up where before there was nothing more than an empty alley. He leads her to them as if he knew all along where they’d be, and often the servers greet him as though he is a regular and beloved customer. They are rarely shown menus. Food and wine simply arrives, each dish more delicious than the last.

Alma asks if he’s been to Paris before, and he replies, “Not exactly.”

It is just one of many questions he doesn’t answer. He tries, he tells her things that she would never have thought to ask, but there are times that she can see the wariness in him, the things he feels he has to keep secret, even from her.

One afternoon they are walking by the Seine and she asks how he came to join the Eye, what tasks he had to complete. He is quiet for a long moment, smiling to himself, and then he says, “Well, I wasn’t in a penthouse suite in Vegas, I can tell you that much.”

He changes the subject, and she doesn’t ask again. She’s decided she doesn’t want to know.

They make love. Alma pulls Dylan into her bedroom the first time, kisses him as she unbuttons her blouse. His usually sure and quick hands shake when he touches her, but she presses into them, smoothes her own hands along the ridges of his fingers until they steady. When she comes, she feels as though she is flying into small pieces, rising from the bed to dissolve into the air around him. She wonders if it’s magic, and then Dylan murmurs her name, and she knows it is.

The last day, he doesn’t tell her that he has to go. It’s just understood. They spend the day hiding from the world in her apartment, talking. Sometimes, they argue, but they are good arguments, finding their balance, ending more often in laughter than annoyance. She wonders if she should offer to take him to the train station or the airport. She doesn’t expect him to just pull his jacket on and kiss her goodnight before walking out the front door.

She goes after him even as the latch is clicking into place, but the hallway is empty. He’s gone.

~

Alma keeps reading books about magic. Everything from history to theory to beginner’s card tricks. She likes learning the language: mercury folds and gaffs and Zarrow shuffles. Sometimes, when she turns a page, she finds things that she knows weren’t there before. Pressed flowers, exotic coins, bits of string and ribbon, pieces of torn currency, bright feathers…

~

Weeks go by before card arrives, propped against the lamp beside her bed. There is no message, just a time and a place, but she likes the mystery of it. She wonders, briefly, if he was here, if he placed it on the table himself, and decides not to think too hard about it. She meets him in a little village near the coast, and they spend a glorious weekend with their feet in the sand, drinking wine and laughing.

~

One afternoon she buys flowers on a whim, lilies. When she unrolls them from the paper, she finds another card inside. This one has a short message and a phone number. She calls it and they talk late into the night about everything and nothing. He’s someplace crowded, with voices shouting and overlapping into noise in the background, but he talks to her as if he’s curled up beside her on the couch.

~

There is a bakery where she likes to have breakfast on her days off. Warm bread and sweet butter and fresh fruit and a cup of rich espresso. She shouldn’t be surprised to find him waiting for her, but she is surprised to see Atlas there, straddling a chair across from him, talking quickly and with an expansive flailing of arms. When Dylan sees her, it’s obvious that he stops listening. She comes to the table and waits until Atlas sees her, too, and his excited chattering slows to a stop.

“Will you be joining us?” she asks.

“No, he won’t,” Dylan says, more to Atlas than her.

“No, I won’t,” Atlas gets up, turning the chair toward her. “I was just…I’m going. Do you know where I can get a real cup of coffee around here?”

“Of course.” She gestures vaguely to the northeast. “England is that way.”

He laughs, but pretends to get his bearings. “That way. Got it. Be seeing you.”

She wonders if she will, but Dylan is smiling at her, and the bread has arrived, and she just laughs again.

~

Alma still has Atlas’s deck of cards. She gets it out one morning, practicing her shuffle, trying to go through the motions of the card tricks she has learned. When she dramatically flips over the top card for no one in particular, she see writing along the edge of it. It’s part of a sentence, in Dylan’s familiar loose handwriting. She looks more carefully at the next card and finds more writing. It takes her hours, but she pieces together the letter. He talks about growing up without his father (lonely), about creating a new persona for himself (freeing), about working in the FBI (surprisingly rewarding), and about finding her (scared, but hopeful). She cries while she reads it, and then feels silly. Shuffling the cards, she returns them to the box and puts them away again.

~

The next time she sees Dylan, she’s on her way home from the office. It’s pouring rain and the streets are crowded with summer tourists unprepared for the weather, scrambling for shelter and crouched under shopping bags and newspapers. Alma lifts her umbrella out of the way as two young woman dash past her, both soaked to the skin. She watches them duck into a doorway and collapse against each other, laughing. When she turns back, Dylan is there.

He’s standing close enough to be sheltered by her umbrella, and, despite not having one of his own, he’s perfectly dry. Not a drop of rain has touched his curling brown hair or the dark gray suit he wears. He looks tired, but when she looks up at him, his eyes light up.

“There you are,” she says, as though she has been waiting for him. Because she has.

He nods, coming in close for a kiss. “Here I am.”

 

The End


End file.
